


Your Weekly Horoscope

by seapotato



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Death curse, Getting Together, Horoscopes, M/M, Prompt writing, Smoochy smoochy, anxiety with a happy ending, dean's low self esteem, disaster bi, more Feelings than anticipated, more plot than aniticpated, post-case case fic, praise kink lite, sam's breakfast choices, siblings bickering, soft, they both know that they BOTH KNOW, timelines are for people stronger than me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23596498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seapotato/pseuds/seapotato
Summary: “It's all in your head today. In other words, you can alter your reality by simply thinking differently. Feeling unattractive? Remind yourself that you are indeed very attractive, and people will start seeing it. Worried you won't pass a test? Tell yourself that you'll do as well as you can. It's important to realize that your powers of positive thinking are just as strong as your powers of negative thinking, so try to switch your thinking around.”Sam shuts his laptop entirely too triumphantly and flops back down into his chair. He grins at Dean.“Positive thinking, Dean. I know you can do it.”---Or: Dean gets hit with a horoscope death curse.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 85





	Your Weekly Horoscope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rinja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinja/gifts).



> Prompt writing with Rinja: Dean's horoscope during mid-march, originally meant to be 20 minutes and a couple pages, instead spiraled into a several hour 13-page feelings and make-out monster.

It's not his fault. It's really not.

“It's not my fault!” Dean says.

Sam glares and points a fingerat him because he likes to pretend he has manners but he doesn't.

“You're the one who rushed in there! You didn't even wait for me to call you back from the morgue!”

This whole conversation is pointless because Sam is obviously wrong.

“Yeah, that's because I figured it out. I knew it was the psychic the whole time!”

Cas clears his throat and Sam's glare redoubles, while Dean rolls his eyes a little.

“Okay, Cas figured it out. But I knew he was right. He called it on the psychic not being the actual psychic—” goddamn it, he's so frustrated with Sam that he's hardly making any sense, “and I called it that the she was a shifter. The new psychic. Not the dead one. Well, they're both dead.” Sam gives him a deeply unimpressed look. “You know what I mean!”

“I do, and that's kind of the problem. If either of you had waited for me to call you back, you wouldn't have been _cursed_ when you made them 'both dead'.”

Dean's going to grab Sam's hair and yank it really hard. He's going to put laxatives on all his salads. He's about to point a finger right back at him, at his gargantuan chest and his ugly yellow and red plaid, because Sam may have figured out the shifter was killing people by writing it into their horoscopes, and he may have figured out the original psychic had actual powers, but there was no way he could have known that a shifter could cast a death curse.

He's gearing up for another round of this argument when Sam abruptly gives up with a huff and says loudly, “Whatever. Just. Whatever. It doesn't matter anymore anyway. You two _are_ those victims, but whatever. As far as I can tell it'll wear off quickly. Without the psychic writing the horoscopes, yours should just follow what's in the town newspaper. I was going to make you write up the case, but I think that'd be punishing me in the long run. Go away, both of you, I want to work in the kitchen.”

With that, Dean and Cas are effectively dismissed. Dean tries not to look too smug about it because Sam was, honestly, always more clever with his pranks and Dean doesn't want to tempt fate more than this death curse already has.

“Meet me at the couch in ten?” Dean asks, looking back at Cas.

Cas nods at him and they split at the kitchen doorway. Dean goes to his room to change into sweatpants and one of his five identical faded AC/DC shirts. If he's stuck having his life dictated by vague and cheesy horoscopes for the next however, he may as well be comfortable.

Cas is already on the couch when Dean gets there and they binge watch _Deadliest Catch_ and then, to Cas's disgust and Dean's complete and utter amusement, _Ancient Aliens_ until Cas becomes so unbearable that Dean is not amused at all and they flip to a _Twilight Zone_ marathon. Sam comes in at some point, pretending to not care that he's left out of all the bonding. He settles in the armchair with his laptop and does a bad job of not sneaking glaces at the episodes they've both seen since childhood.

Dean falls asleep early and wakes up with Cas nudging him. He's drooling a little on Cas's shoulder. Gross.

“Dean,” Cas says quietly. Dean sits up only to flop back against the couch. He squints open his eyes to see Cas bathed in flickering bluish-white light from the TV. Dean feels floaty, underwater, content as he always is to see Cas still there, still here, always expecting him to disappear.

“You should go to the kitchen. Sam just went to 'practice' making pasta.” Cas helpfully puts the air-quotes around _practice_ , as if Dean couldn't figure out that Sam+cooking=sauce boiling over and overdone noodles. The kitchen he just cleaned is about to get ruined.

Dean is suddenly wide awake and stumbling off the couch.

“Ugh. Thanks. You staying for dinner?” Fuck. He's not as awake as he thought because he's trying not to do that. Trying not to ask Cas if he's staying or leaving because he doesn't want to know the answer anymore. Cas has been around for a few weeks now and Dean's been surviving on not looking that gift horse in the mouth.

“Yes,” Cas says simply, as if it's the easiest thing in the world, as if Dean wouldn't give an embarrassing amount to hear that all the time, to not even need to hear it.

**\---**

The next morning it all goes to shit.

Dean wakes up, feels pretty normal for a guy with a death curse on him, takes a shower, towels off his hair, gets dressed, heads to the kitchen to make coffee, goes about his routine while Sam crunches on cereal—with, ew, a banana sliced up into it, what even—toasts some waffles, pours his coffee, sits at the table, and is passively aggressively putting a coaster under Sam's coffee mug when Sam says, “Dude, what are you doing?”

“What? You're not the one who scrubs the coffee rings out of the table.”

“With your,” he gestures with his spoon at Dean's head, “your hair.”

Dean frowns, runs a hand through his hair, “What about my hair?”

“That!” Sam says, flailing the spoon around, “What you just did! You keep messing with it.”

Oh. Yeah, he might be. He realizes he had been trying to fix it, that no matter how he pushed it around it settled strangely and made him look dumb.

“Does it look bad? I feel like it looks bad.”

Sam stares at him.

“What! It does, doesn't it? I knew it. I woke up and it was all spiky on one side. I should just shower again.”

“Dean. When have you ever cared about how your hair looks?”

“Look, not all of us are Goldilocks, okay? Just because I don't spend hours on haircare to get it all soft and wind-blown like yours—and, by the way, how do you even do that, I tried your shampoo, it didn't help—doesn't mean I don't care. Also,” what the hell why can't he stop talking, “do you think these jeans make my thighs look big? Like, weird big, not good big?”

He wants to punch himself in the face not just because he can't seem to stop but because he feels like it's _true_. He feels kind of dumpy today. He briefly wonders if Cas is still here and disturbingly he _doesn't want to see him_ until he maybe showers again to try to fix his hair and changes into less baggy pants. Does he even have less baggy pants?

Sam has gone from looking confused to annoyed to legitimately concerned.

“Don't move,” Sam says, and nearly runs out of the kitchen with his grasshopper legs that, unlike Dean's, do not look weird big. Just proportional to his hulking self.

Sam comes back as Dean is making a face from eating a slice of banana from Sam's bowl. There were like, little crunchy things on it, little seeds or some shit that Dean honest to god thought were dead ants at first. He'd only tried a slice because he thought maybe he should start eating more fruit or something, maybe that'd help with the definitely not-muscle padding around his hips because at some point his body decided to not be twenty-something anymore.

Sam shoves Dean's coffee and plate out of the way and sticks his laptop in front of Dean's face. On the screen is the local paper for the town they had found the shifter in. It's a horoscope. Aquarius, which is, apparently, _his_ horoscope. Dean scans it quickly and feels the back of his neck get warm. Sam is merciless and reads it out loud.

“It's all in your head today. In other words, you can alter your reality by simply thinking differently. Feeling unattractive? Remind yourself that you are indeed very attractive, and people will start seeing it. Worried you won't pass a test? Tell yourself that you'll do as well as you can. It's important to realize that your powers of positive thinking are just as strong as your powers of negative thinking, so try to switch your thinking around.”

Sam shuts his laptop entirely too triumphantly and flops back down into his chair. He grins at Dean.

“Positive thinking, Dean. I know you can do it.”

Cas chooses that moment to walk into the kitchen, quickly checking Dean's coffee and refilling it for him. Dean wants to crawl into the backseat of the Impala and never come out, not because Cas is being effortlessly domestic, but because he's _still worried about how his hair looks_.

Cas hovers by the table but doesn't sit down. He retreats to the sink, starts to idly put away a few forks. Sam is pointedly not looking at Dean but Dean can feel him radiating his best little brother shit-eating grin aura. Dean makes a face at him that Sam pretends not to see.

“I agree,” Cas says suddenly. Dean and Sam both stop and look at him. “About positive thinking.”

And the day spirals down from there.

**\---**

Dean doesn't fix his hair. He doesn't change into different jeans. He stubbornly sinks into feeling dumpy, painfully self-conscious, and like everything he does is a mistake because he sucks. It's not too far off from how he feels all the time, anyway.

He refuses to 'think positive' first because he hates being told what to do. Second, because, as he's becoming unsettlingly aware, he's not really sure how to. How do you 'think positive' when your life regularly includes demons? When Satan wore your little brother as a meatsuit? When you saw a future in which everyone you love dies, because of you? When spray cheese exists?

It shouldn't really be that big of a problem. He just has to wait it out. He isolates himself until lunch, listening to music and reading a copy of _Fahrenheit 451_ so worn out that the spine is cracked and crumbling, the corners of the pages soft and smudged from his fingers over the years.

It should be like any other rough day. He's permanently haunted by every person he's failed to save, every stupid choice he's ever made. But, he's a genius at compartmentalizing.

Actually, he's probably really terrible at compartmentalizing which is why he has this haze of anger thrumming under his skin all the time. But that's in the long run. In the short run, he's excellent at partitioning off his feelings. He'd have been dead by the time he was nine if he wasn't. Today is different. It is literally out of his control and he wants that back. He needs that back.

No matter how hard he tries to focus, his mind slips away, tugged like a branch caught in a river. Zoning out reading, he starts to drift off, not realizing he's closed his eyes because he can still see the word _burn_ littered over the page. Book burning becomes burning of other precious things—hex bags to stop cruel and uncreative tortures, a lock of hair, bones, burn lines on a map, whole pyres for the dead, circles of fire, scorch marks like a winged shadow on the ground, and—holy shit, Dean sits up breathing hard, edges of his vision swimming, adrenaline making his stomach feel sick and his heart race.

He needs to get out of here because what is happening, the curse must actually be killing him, he has to—he stumbles off his bed, out the door, and smack into Sam who full on drops a sandwich onto the ground and grabs him by the shoulders looking panicked, mouth moving.

Dean can't really hear him, he's underwater again but in a bad way and no matter how much he breathes he still can't get enough air. He and Sam have sunk down to the floor and Sam is in front of him kneeling on a piece of bread, and he's grabbing Dean's arms but he's shouting over his shoulder and then Cas is there, squeezed into the tight space between the wall and Dean. They are three huge dudes in a tiny hallway and Dean looks up at Cas, at the way his eyes are so wide and he looks so vulnerable and there's too much there, too much softness that someone can burn, that Dean manages to gasp “You—you're—”, wants to tell him not to look like that because Cas is a tough bastard but looking like that he's going to get hurt and then what will Dean do?

Looking at him, it's like Cas is already dead, he's already dead again, there's nothing Dean can do to keep him because Dean is a piece of shit and what does he deserve, anyway. He wants to throw up and it's been less than a minute but also it's been an eternity and what if he feels like this all the time forever?

He dry heaves once and Sam (Dean loves his brother so much) doesn't back away and at the moment Cas curls his hand around the back of Dean's neck, Cas's voice cuts through and says, “I'm here, Dean, I'm right here,” and Dean realizes he's having a panic attack. Sam is squeezing his shoulders rhythmically and saying “Dean, hey, Dean, it's okay” over and over and Cas's hand is firm on the back of his neck, anchoring him, so Dean tries to match his breathing to the pattern Sam is pressing against his arms and fixates on Cas's shoes, of all things, and comes back slowly to himself.

**\---**

“You just have to like, start with something neutral,” Sam says, furiously scrolling on his laptop. It's two hours after Dean's panic attack, which he is staunchly insisting was entirely curse induced with absolutely no relationship to his actual feelings. He refuses to explain what led to it or what he was thinking during it.

They've set up in one of the libraries, a smaller one that Dean likes because the Men of Letters somehow put in tiny windows around the ceiling molding that let in natural light. They'd never been able to find the windows from the outside, which is pretty cool.

After an intense “planning session” between Sam and Cas that Dean had not been invited to, they'd reconvened to try to help Dean think happy thoughts. Embarrassed doesn't even begin to cover how Dean feels. Sam and Cas have both started treating it like a case again, which they all realized they shouldn't have stopped doing. They're both giving him space and talking about it very clinically. But Cas keeps glancing over at him and has never had the decency to look away and pretend that he wasn't staring when Dean catches his eye.

Dean doesn't know what “neutral” even means. Nothing in their life is neutral. He has an opinion on everything. And he knows, to his horror, that if he looked over Sam's shoulder he'd see twenty tabs of therapy websites, mindfulness tutorials, and something called “wellness” that he'd try to push on Dean a year ago that Dean still doesn't understand.

“Can't we try to break the damn curse instead?” Dean knows the answer to that. They can't. They've tried. Anything that might have had a slim chance of working—lots of blood, transference and sacrifice, temporarily stopping Dean's heart—doesn't really seem worth it. Cas had been able to determine that the death curse was strong enough to affect Dean (obviously) but weak enough that it should dissipate by the next morning. “And besides,” Dean continues, not waiting for any kind of answer, “why isn't Cas affected by this? We were both there.”

“It might be because you were the one who shot her,” Cas says.

Sam shakes his head. “I don't think so. A death curse like this usually has a radius, and you really did both have a hand in killing her.”

It's quiet for a minute as Dean picks at a fraying thread on the knee of his (dumpy) jeans, sips the water Sam insisted he drink.

“It's probably because I don't have a birthday,” Cas says finally, all in a rush, “I'm sorry.” Dean really doesn't know what that means. He's sorry that he's another...species or whatever, so birthdays don't apply to him? That he predates astrology and probably time itself? That he's not suffering his own horoscope with Dean?

It's awkwardly quiet for a minute before Sam shuffles around and says, bless him, “Um, yeah. That's okay, Cas. Dean, why don't you do your best to think of simple things you like. Music, movies. Be distracted by your favorite stuff. Try doing that for ten minutes.”

Dean is skeptical but he's also tired now that the adrenaline from the panic attack has worn off, so he gets up from the table to sit sideways in an armchair across the room, feet hanging off one armrest with his head against the other.

They settle into a sort of comfortable silence for a little bit, Sam clicking through his tabs and typing while Cas leans over and shares the screen, jotting down his own notes. Dean runs through his top ten favorite songs, thinks about why they are so good, that Sam's taste in music is terrible, how he never wants to hear another Red Hot Chili Peppers song as long as he lives. It's not too hard. He's doing okay. He hears Sam and Cas talking quietly to each other, lets it filter through him.

It's not a terrible way to spend the late afternoon, thinking about music while his brother and his best friend are alive and nobody is yelling at anybody else. A few words start to snag on his consciousness though, and it's just about ten minutes when he realizes what's happening at the table.

“No,” he says, leaning up to glare at them, “You are not psychoanalyzing me.”

“We're not psychoanalyzing you. We're trying to figure out what might be most helpful based on your, you know, traumas.” Even Sam falters at the end because he's as guilty as Dean is when it comes to shoving down all the painful crap so that he can keep going.

“What are some of your dream?” Cas asks, staring at him intensely. His dreams? Like, his nightmares?

“Hell no. We are not doing this.”

Cas looks at him like he pities him for not being able to follow this conversation. “I mean, your hopes. Positive hopes. What are things you want in life?”

Dean actually crosses his arms and thunks his head back against the armrest to stare at the ceiling.

“Save people. Hunt things,” he recites, dully. He's not doing this.

“Dean,” Sam says, “part of positive thinking is focusing on a future. On having a future. It doesn't have to be huge. It can be like, what do you want for dinner tonight?”

Dean hates all of this. He thought it'd be Sam and Cas giving him fake advice from some blog and he would nod and agree and then he could suffer through the rest of the day alone, privately, even if it did actually kill him.

“Lasagna,” Dean says, petulantly.

“Great! That's great! What else?” Sam says, probably because he wants Dean to make lasagna even though they had pasta last night. Dean leans up to see Cas shoot Sam a look that clearly says it's not great at all. And Dean remembers: they're out of tomato. Of course they are. He was actually starting to get a little excited about making lasagna tonight, and now not having it ruins everything. His eyes start to glaze over. What did he expect. Of course he can't have it. He can't ever have anything he wants. Even lasagna. And now Sam can't have lasagna either. He's the worst brother, and he's spiraling over noodles and this is a terrible death curse and—

“Dean! Focus!” Sam snaps his fingers at him from the table and Dean comes back, breathes slowly, groans and presses the heel of his hands into his eyes.

“Can't you just leave me to deal with this on my own? It'll be over soon anyway.”

“No,” Sam says. “Absolutely not. You didn't see yourself earlier. I know the shifter is dead and it's just the newspaper horoscope, but Dean, it's a curse for a reason—it could still make you—if it goes too far...”

He knows what Sam is avoiding saying. Dean's been primed for self sacrifice since the moment he clutched baby Sam to his chest and ran through their burning house. He's been flirting with self destruction for almost as long.

“Sam,” Cas says, “I want to try something.”

Sam takes a slightly shaky breath and nods. “Sure, go ahead.”

“I'd like you to leave the room. Please.”

“Uhh,” Sam and Dean say at the same time.

“I have an idea, a theory, but I don't think it'll work if you're here. Dean is,” he narrows his eyes at Dean, sharp as a blade, “defensive.” Cas is a soldier. A commander. A tactician and a strategist. He's looking at Dean like a complex, frustrating battleground that he is going to pick apart, a geography he is going to infiltrate and rearrange to suit his needs.

Dean is a bit stunned, and annoyed by how he's not really annoyed, how he is maybe sort of into it in a way that's hard to understand. He can't think of anything more eloquent to say than “Uhh” again.

Sam is beet red and already grabbing his laptop and charger. He fakes sounding extremely casual when he says, “Yeah, yeah he is! Definitely. I'll just be out there. I'll be in my room.” He slaps Cas manfully on the back, gives him a “Good luck!” and is gone.

Well. Dean swings his legs off the armrest and sits up fully in the chair. Cas stays where he is, seated at the table across the small room.

“So,” Dean says, trying to be way more casual than Sam had been, which is a joke, really, because he has no chill right now, “What's your theory?”

“I have two, but they dovetail each other. The first is that you're more comfortable with negative thoughts than positive, so you need to be pushed out of what makes you comfortable to accept anything outside of the negative.” Cas has this professor voice on, like he's reciting something he read. Who says 'dovetail'?

Dean shifts, looking away from Cas and at his knees. He's spent whole nights in sewers hunting monsters. He's had things explode on him. He can do uncomfortable. He knows that's not what Cas is talking about, and he doesn't like where this is going.

“Are you going to try to make me talk about my feelings?” he asks, ready to run for the door. He attempts to make it sound light and fails utterly.

The corner of Cas's mouth quirks up. “No,” he says, “we're going to talk about mine.”

**\---**

As Dean is gaping unattractively at Cas, a few things coalesce all at once. Cas has never been shy about expressing his feelings. He is incandescent when angry, like a magnesium flare. Insufferable and overwhelming when righteous, like the shockwaves of an earthquake. Quiet and radiant when he's content, carefully collecting moments of reprieve like shards of sea-glass. And above all, his love is like a blast of desert heat. It is all-encompassing and it is the sensation Dean always imagines when he thinks _unconditional_. It is active and alive and makes the air waver around them, and even when he's pissed at Dean, it is always there.

And that's the thing. He knows that Cas knows about this _whatever_ between them. They both know. And Cas has never hesitated or flinched from it. He has held back, definitely, but he's held back on Dean's account, not his own. Dean has hesitated, and flinched, crawled and flat-out run away from it because he knows how he loves and he knows he's made terrible choices—wrong choices—because of that love. Cas's love is a scouring desert heat while Dean's is the lush rotting ground of a forest, humid and dark, threatening to become overgrown at the slightest provocation, filled with roots that tangle and trip, rife with the brambles of everything he can't say. It feeds off of itself no matter what he tosses in.

And he knows the worst part: he wouldn't do anything different. He'd make the bad choices again. Cas puts no limits on his love for Dean, and that is fucking terrifying. What wouldn't Dean do, at this point? Realistically? Since Cas won't set limits, Dean has set his own and they are painfully constricted but that's the point.

So. Here he is. Ugly jeans. Bad hair. A stupid horoscope that skips past all his defenses. Cas across the room, still half-smiling at him as Dean works through what's about to happen. Cas has no problem talking. He doesn't need Dean to talk about his feelings because they _share the same feelings_. Dean does not know who he is without Cas anymore. He used to exist in layers, separated and leveled out, but since Cas everything started mixing together. The part of him that bursts frantically into bloom over things like Cas saying he prefers whoppers over big macs, or naming every single roadside wildflower Dean has never wondered the name about, is rioting right now. The rest of him—the voice that sets the boundaries tighter than anyone else would—is exhausted and dazed. He's stuck. Locked up.

Cas takes pity on him, or maybe doesn't, because he says, “I'll stay over here for now. But I'm going to start.”

Dean can't really say anything because he has no idea what wouldn't make this worse. He shuts his mouth and stares at the bookshelf across from him and nods.

“Dean,” he says, and pauses. No one else says his name like that, and it makes something in Dean uncoil and stretch out. “You're a good person.”

The breath he was holding gets punched out of him. It's not what he expected. Holy shit. Cas is not messing around. He went straight for the underbelly, the throat, all the weak parts.

“Hah,” Dean says and it comes out a little hoarse, “that's not really a feeling.” He means it as a refutation, to try to disrupt, but at the last second he realizes what Cas will take it as: a challenge.

“You're right—that one is more of a fact. Though I would call it both. Nevertheless, you're a good person.”

“I'm not, Cas. I'm really not. I'm just—” A disappointment. Worthless. A failure. A grunt. A flawed weapon on good days. A monster on bad days.

Cas ignores him and keeps going. “Intelligent. You're very smart, often too smart when there's something I can't tell you because it isn't safe for you to know. Don't argue with that, it isn't the point. You're curious and clever.”

Here Dean opens his mouth to say _No, absolutely not_ , but Cas bowls right over him, his voice severe. “No, Dean, be quiet. It's all true, but it's also how I feel so you need to shut up even if you aren't listening yet.”

There is a flush creeping up Dean's neck and he can feel his ears turning red. This is not what he thought was going to happen. It's far worse and he wants it to stop but he also doesn't.

“You can't tell me to shut up,” he protests weakly.

Cas tips his chin up, defiant and too proud, “I just did.” It's a dumb way to win an argument but Dean lets him. Fine. He will shut up and he will sit here and not listen and Cas will give up and go away and they can pretend this never happened.

When Dean is quiet for a beat Cas continues, “You're curious and clever and I like how your mind works on a hunt. You apply your knowledge differently than Sam, and you work so well together because of it.”

“You too,” Dean says, immediately breaking his resolve to not talk. He clenches his hands into fists on his knees. “We work well together, too.” He chances a glance over at Cas which is a big mistake because Cas's eyes light up and he smiles.

“We do,” he says. They stare at each other for a minute and Dean thinks that maybe this isn't that bad. It's weird as hell, but he can deal with it. Nothing too crazy. So Cas wants to convince him he's not an idiot, that's okay. Dean is actually pretty proud of some of the cases he's solved, the ones where he didn't figure shit out too late. He knows he's a good hunter. It's not really an ego thing; he and Sam are probably the best hunters out there right now, by virtue of the sheer variety of horrors they have personally witnessed. So this is okay.

Then Cas says, “I like how you use your hands,” and Dean immediately looks away, cheeks burning.

“You can't—”

“Shut up,” Cas says easily, and Dean hears the scrape of the chair against the floor, hears Cas come over and sees Cas's legs stop a little in front of Dean's chair. “I like that you're a good shot, even though I hate that it's because you've been hunting since you were a child. I like that you know how to work on the Impala, that you've rebuilt her countless times. I like how you use a knife, whether stabbing a ghoul or slicing onions. Maybe slicing onions a little more—I like watching you cook, because you enjoy it so much.”

His words fall onto Dean like a soft rain and Dean's mind starts to fuzz out a bit. He lets out a small breath and closes his eyes.

He hears Cas squat down in front of him. Cas's knees bump into his shins. He can't look at him right now. His face is bright red and he's breathing a little fast. It's all too much. It cuts to the quick but has a strange satisfaction, like digging out a splinter, the cleansing burn of alcohol on an open wound. There might be, he thinks, a flipside to the horoscope. When he was spiraling, every bad thought took over. Now with Cas saying these...things to him, these _nice things_ , it's like the curse is eating it all up, demanding more, letting it all spiral upward instead of down. He's not able to believe everything Cas is saying but it doesn't seem to matter. His words are seeping through and bypassing all of Dean's walls.

He turns his head away. He hears Cas huff and then he feels Cas's hands circle his wrists. Dean's heart is rabbiting; surely Cas knows.

“I like that your hands are careful when you're treating a wound. I like that you don't ever stop there—you are kind. You comfort people. You look at them, at their fears, the blood, and you never waver. You care, you make them feel cared for. Even when...even when it's too late. Even when it hurts you.”

Dean's breathing has gone a bit ragged and he lets Cas pry open one of his fists. The back of his hand rests in Cas's palm. Then the tips of Cas's fingers trace along the lines on his palm and—holy shit, it's the most erotic and confusing thing that's ever happened to Dean. Sparks of bizarre pleasure chase up and down his fingers, fire off along his spine.

“It will always be the right choice to care,” Cas says, stroking Dean's hand apparently with the goal of getting Dean as sweaty and weirdly turned on as possible. Cas's fingers are calloused, something he must have let happen over the past few months, and they drag over Dean's own callouses, over all the little scars and nicks in Dean's palm. Then he sweeps his fingers out along Dean's, pausing at the swell of his fingertips before sweeping back to his palm and Dean actually gasps out _Cas_ and he is horrifically embarrassed because _what is this_.

He always thought it'd be a heat of the battle thing. A drunk thing. A high-on-adrenaline survival thing. A deathbed confession (though they've confessed a hundred times now, in a hundred different ways, nearly every conversation, every look, feels like a confession at this point). Or, a never thing. He didn't think—he never thought it would happen like this, in a little library in the bunker, nobody bleeding out or recently back from the dead. Only a minor curse and nowhere else to be, no other fire to put out.

Dean's sleeves are rolled up to his elbows and Cas's fingers move to stroke his forearm, chased by that same strange slow spark of pleasure.

Cas's voice is a bit unsteady when he says, “There is nothing good that you are unworthy of.”

Dean has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making a mortifying noise. Cas's hands slip away from him and he nearly whines at the loss of contact. Without it he feels totally ungrounded, his eyes still shut tight, arcs and patterns of light playing against the backs of his eyelids. Then Cas's hands are back, on either side of his neck, thumbs resting against his jaw and anchoring him. He's scooted in closer and nudged Dean's legs apart so he's kneeling between them and Dean can feel the heat radiating off of him and into his calves.

“Dean, look at me.” Dean shakes his head so Cas leans up, turns Dean's head towards him, tips it forward to rest their foreheads together. Cas's breath fans warm against his face, gusts over his mouth, and even though he isn't stroking Dean's hand or arm anymore, Dean hasn't stopped feeling heat slide through him, blossoming low in his stomach.

“You,” Cas starts, then stops. Takes a breath and starts again. “We can have this. We already have it. You are good enough. You won't ruin it. And,” he laughs a little, “if it's taken from us, I can promise that it won't hurt more later than it would now. Not for me. We can have this and nothing will change, but in a good way.”

Dean's eyes open wide and his head jerks back and he's staring right at Cas, a little too close, a little blurry from how tightly his eyes had been squeezed shut. Cas frowns and Dean sees him start to close off, expression shuttered, his hands lifting away from Dean's jaw and no no no—Dean grabs Cas's wrists, holds him there, looks right at him and says, because Cas has melted his brain by barely touching him, “Oh.”

“I—”

“Shut up,” Dean says, staring at him hard as it all clicks in to place. Cas is right. What he feels—how he feels—it's not going to _decrease_. It's not going to get less complicated just because he's holding back. If he lost Cas today, tomorrow, in a hundred years...it'd wreck him no matter what. It's already wrecked him. He already loves him. Basically, it's already too late. So why the hell did he fence himself in? Why draw so many lines when he knows he would cross them now just as soon as he would later?

It's a ridiculous revelation. And with it comes an epiphany that truly makes him want to punch himself. Anything they haven't done isn't protected from the pile of pain that Dean knows will come when one of them finally permanently bites the dust. Not doing anything is _ripe for regret_. Not doing anything is a fucking _tragic waste of time_. Very suddenly, Dean wants to do _everything_.

Cas sees the moment Dean really understands what he's saying. His thumbs move lightly, just brushing Dean's cheeks before going back down to his jaw and Dean thinks _Wow, this can be mine, and it's okay_.

“Dean—”

“Can I—”

“ _Yes._ ”

And Cas is pulling Dean forward hard just as Dean is letting go of his wrists and lurching forward so that when they kiss it's a bit violent and Cas rocks back on his heels. It's a terrible kiss. It's fantastic. It's one of Cas's hands against Dean's jaw and the other sliding into his hair. It's Dean grabbing at Cas's shoulders and tugging at him so that Cas gets with the program and somehow manages to climb up onto the armchair with Dean, their legs switching so that Cas's brackets his thighs, without breaking the kiss.

It's Cas leaning over him now with his hand in Dean's hair tilting Dean's head back and Dean parting his lips, just a little, just a tease to see what Cas will do and Cas inhaling sharply through his nose and immediately licking at him, pressing his thumb tight against Dean's jaw so that Dean opens his mouth wider and then it gets very messy and stupidly hot. Dean flicks his tongue against Cas's, presses it flat to let Cas lick the back of his teeth which really shouldn't be attractive except for how it makes a small moan flutter in Dean's throat. His hands are on Cas's hips, and he tugs to pull him in a little closer, Cas's back arching slightly as Dean moves one hand to dip under his coat and jacket, fits it against the curve of Cas's lower back. Cas breaks the kiss but keeps one hand in Dean's hair to keep his head tugged back, his other hand on Dean's waist has he leans down to bite at the junction of Dean's neck.

“Ha, hey—” Dean pants into Cas's ear, feeling intensely like he's having an out of body experience and also more present than he's ever been.

“You are,” and Cas bites again, voice low as runs his hand possessively against Dean's ribs when Dean can't help his hips from circling up, trying to get as much contact with Cas as possible, “a good person,” another bite, then the press of Cas's tongue dragging up, the sweet rasp of his tastebuds at the very edge of Dean's stubble, and it makes so many things crossfire in Dean's head that he thinks _okay, okay, sure, whatever_ and lets Cas neck him for another five seconds before he moves to kiss Cas on the mouth again. It is brief and relatively chaste and they pull back to stare at each other. They're both a bit out of breath and Cas—

Cas looks like he wants to eat him alive. He's flushed, eyes bright and hair a mess from Dean rucking it up. He doesn't quite remember doing that. Dean is sure he looks like a disaster. Cas cocks his head to the side and it's so _him_ , nothing is really that different, they are still them, the world didn't burn down.

It makes Dean blurt out, “I want to do everything,” because he's an idiot who has no filter after making out.

Cas sits back on Dean's knees, gives him one of those small smiles and says, “I know.”

Dean stares at him. “Did you just—Han Solo me?” and Dean loves him, he really does.

“I did,” Cas says with zero shame. He kisses Dean's forehead once, quickly. “And we will.”

Dean doesn't just mean the naked stuff. He wants all of that, definitely. But he wants everything else, too. He wants Cas to refill his coffee and he wants to build him raised planters behind the bunker so Cas can have a garden. He wants Sam and Cas to be nerdy over scroll translations while Dean reads with his feet tucked under Cas on the couch. He wants to go on hunts together. He wants to think about Cas as he's driving down an empty stretch of road or stuck in traffic outside of a city, wants to hear him on the phone late at night at a motel and he wants to come home to Cas and have Cas come home to him. He wants all the mundane stuff like mixed up socks. He wants the scary stuff, too, the hunts gone wrong, because he knows those are going to happen anyway so the least they can do is be together when it does. All of these things are good.

“Dean,” Cas says, as Dean is thinking all of this and letting it get tangled up in his chest, not sure how to articulate the devastating, beautiful weight of it all, “I know. I want everything, too.”

**\---**


End file.
